reclaiming old and worn estate pipes

A Rare Find – An Early Ivarsson Pickaxe Stanwell Collectors Piece

I wanted to reblog this so rebornpipes readers can see this rarity. Charles has done a great job restoring it. Too bad that Bas Stevens, Mr. Stanwell died this past weekend or we could have asked him about it.

I’ve been sitting on this restoration for a while, mainly because it took some time for me to come to grips with the pipe’s pedigree. The pipe in question is a Stanwell Collectors Piece, a special series of pipes issued during the company’s “Regd. No.” era (roughly 1948 – 1970) and apparently quite rare in the North American estate pipe market (I’ve come across only one other example to date).

The pipe is stamped on the left shank with “Stanwell” over “REGD.No. 969-48” over “Made in Denmark” over “Collectors Piece”. On the right shank the pipe bears a circular stamp which reads “An Ivarsson Design”.

Regular DadsPipes readers will recognize Ivarsson’s Pickaxe shape from the restoration of the Royal Guard 01-M I posted a while back. In that entry, I noted that the “01” Pickaxe shape was introduced to the Stanwell catalog around 1975. The presence of the “Regd No”…